Had hoped to see Giamatti as a JJ Klingon one day. Fear he may be wasted here but will be good anyway. Having just seen Antony Hopkins' Hitchcock, wondered if he might don the fatsuit again as Kingpin . But dream casting would have been Robbie Coltrane.

Kingpin previously was owned by Fox, when they bought the rights to Daredevil. But Fox let it lapse and the rights to the character now belong to Marvel studios. Admittedly, as discussed above, Marvel might be more open to lending characters like him to Sony to appear in a Spider-man movie but it's still on the unlikely side.

Count me in as also supporting the 'Bond opening sequence' type approach to minor villains. A good way of including them without getting that cluttered approach of Spider-man 3 or the Schumacher Batman movies.